


Smart Julio

by Siria



Series: Nantucket AU [78]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-22
Updated: 2012-09-22
Packaged: 2017-11-14 20:05:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/519023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Would you believe me if I said I did it for the children?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Smart Julio

**Author's Note:**

  * For [artemis_prime](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=artemis_prime).



> Written for a prompt by artemis_prime. Thanks to Cate for cheerleading and betaing!

"Would you believe me if I said I did it for the children?" The wide-eyed look on Rodney’s face was almost identical to the one Cash had perfected for when he was caught chewing on someone’s sneaker—a potent mix of _who, me_? and _but I thought you'd be happy I killed the evil shoe_! John sighed, scrubbing a hand through his hair. 

"Rodney—"

"Because it was entirely selfless! Practically philanthropy! Definitely pedagogical," Rodney continued, gesturing around at the living room. The room hadn’t exactly been spotless when John had climbed the stairs to bed the night before, but neither had it been the kind of chaos that would make Planck seek a grumpy refuge on the sun-warmed windowsill. Rodney’d pushed the coffee table to one side; on top of it, a mound of scribbled on pages had reached an alarming height, and seemed to be weighted down only by his iPad, its screen bright with multicoloured schematics. Taking the table’s place on the carpet was a metallic ocean of soldering irons and screws, pliers and hammers, an electric drill and a sticky-looking can of WD-40, all interspersed with the sad remains of their TiVo and the Wii. Or, to be more precise, amid the carnage of all the DVR’ed stuff that John would surely never catch up with now. 

"Philanthrophy," John said slowly. 

"Well, Ronon asked me to do it," and yeah, there it was, the infamous McKay Chin Jut. The Chin Jut said that this was the level of stubbornness beyond the one that could be solved by the application of coffee—this could be fixed only with a blowjob, or by distracting Rodney by mocking Mounties' pants for a while. Maybe it had been a mistake, not going to the Farmers' Market with Teyla that morning. Looking at piles of butternut squash would have been a lot more restful. 

John sighed and put his hands on his hips. "What exact words did Ronon actually say?" he asked, drawing on all those command-oriented skills the Air Force'd taught him that he'd used for about 0.03 seconds, back in the day. 

"Well, he didn't so much outright ask for a working prototype," Rodney said, "if you put it like that, but if I'm going to present him with ideas that he can reasonably use with his students, I can't very well do so without testing for viability first, can I? It's my responsibility as an engineer to fill in all the blanks that someone in the _humanities_ would never be aware even exist! The, the nitty gritty, as it were."

"Nuts and bolts, huh?" John said dryly, unable to resist, and cocked an eyebrow at the robot graveyard covering the carpet. 

"Yes, yes, exactly, the—oh, I get it, hilarious, the wit and wisdom of John Sheppard," Rodney sniffed. 

"And I wouldn't go dissing the humanities if I were you," John said. He stretched out a foot and poked gingerly at one of the half-finished contraptions on the floor. If any of them started singing _Daisy, Daisy_ , he was out of there. "You know what happened the last time you two got into an argument about the utility of studying literature."

"So we've been banned from the Nantucket Daffodil Festival," Rodney said. "So what? Big deal! You know who lived his whole life without once attending the Nantucket Daffodil Festival? Einstein! And that doesn't seem to have affected his career too much."

John squinted at him, but didn't say anything. He was pretty sure that was a level of logic he didn't want to encourage in someone he lived with. 

"Besides," Rodney said, flapping a hand before sitting back down on the floor, "Ronon's in Boston for the weekend, visiting Jennifer. It's not like he can hear me anyway." 

"The guy teaches eighth grade, Rodney. He has ears like a bat."

Rodney blanched slightly, but then visibly rallied. "Forging a set of passports can't be that difficult, surely?"

"Oh sure," John said. He abandoned all thoughts of spending his day off catching up on college football, and eased himself down beside Rodney, mindful of his bum knee. "We'll go on the lam because you're scared of a guy who makes his own preserves and spends his days teaching kids how to write in iambic pentameter."

"Julio K. Fowler and Tom Napoli, Jr., that'll be us," Rodney said, putting on his glasses and peering at the innards of one of the robots. "Late of Delaware, soon to take up residence in Rio de Janeiro because Tom's company's transferred him to its new Brazilian branch."

"You've put a suspicious amount of thought into this," John said, eyeing him. 

"Well, clearly I would be Julio in this scenario," Rodney said, passing over an Allen key and something that John couldn't identify, but was pretty sure that the Air Force wouldn't be happy to find out had been taken off a secure base. "That just makes sense. Here, hold these for a minute."

" _You're_ Julio?"

"I look more like a Julio," Rodney said, in the tone he used when he was irritated at having to explain something as simple as black hole thermodynamics to someone. "I'm the distinguished one. Professorial."

"Uh huh," John said dryly, taking in the disorder of Rodney's Saturday-morning, three-weeks-overdue-for-a-cut hair, his striped pyjama pants and the _Padua Middle School_ hoodie that had been Madison's birthday present to her self-proclaimed favourite uncle this year. "That's the word for it."

"But you shouldn't feel too bad," Rodney continued, "Tom's had a pretty decent career. MBA from Harvard and everything."

"Harvard, huh?" John said, considering.

"Yup. And," Rodney said, leaning in and grinning that funny little grin of his, the one that John still felt the irresistible urge to kiss after six years, "I hear his husband thinks he's pretty hot."

"Really?" John said, grinning back, and whatever irritation he'd felt when he'd first walked into the living room, whatever tiredness he'd still been carrying with him after a long, hot week of ferrying entitled jackasses back and forth to the mainland, it was all gone. He closed the distance between them, kissed Rodney, shivered at the feeling of early morning stubble rasping together. "Smart husband."

"Lucky husband," Rodney whispered, the look in his eyes taking on a new kind of focus, a special kind of warmth. He kissed John again, wrench dropping to the floor with a clatter as he reached out to cup the nape of John's neck, fingertips tangling in the short hairs there, and then John was tugging him up to lie alongside him on the wide, battered couch. It was Saturday morning; the world outside could wait for a little while.

(In the end, they called the robots Todd and Kenny. John lost the argument over whether they should be able to fly, but got his way about the go-faster stripes. When they dropped the prototypes off at the school together on Monday morning, Ronon looked down at the robots, then up at John and Rodney, cocked an eyebrow and said, "Robots as foreplay, huh?"

"Ours is a special relationship," Rodney said, beaming with pride, and John could only laugh.)


End file.
